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Embedded Reporters: What Are Americans Getting?

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Embedded Reporters: What Are Americans Getting? Embedded Reporters: What Are Americans Getting? For More Information Contact: Tom Rosenstiel, Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism Amy Mitchell, Associate Director Matt Carlson, Wally Dean, Dante Chinni, Atiba Pertilla, Research Nancy Anderson, Tom Avila, Staff Embedded Reporters: What Are Americans Getting? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suggested we are getting only “slices” of the war. Other observers have likened the media coverage to seeing the battlefield through “a soda straw.” The battle for Iraq is war as we’ve never it seen before. It is the first full-scale American military engagement in the age of the Internet, multiple cable channels and a mixed media culture that has stretched the definition of journalism. The most noted characteristic of the media coverage so far, however, is the new system of “embedding” some 600 journalists with American and British troops. What are Americans getting on television from this “embedded” reporting? How close to the action are the “embeds” getting? Who are they talking to? What are they talking about? To provide some framework for the discussion, the Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a content analysis of the embedded reports on television during three of the first six days of the war. The Project is affiliated with Columbia University and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The embedded coverage, the research found, is largely anecdotal. It’s both exciting and dull, combat focused, and mostly live and unedited. Much of it lacks context but it is usually rich in detail. It has all the virtues and vices of reporting only what you can see. In particular: In an age when the press is often criticized for being too interpretive, the overwhelming majority of the embedded stories studied, 94%, were primarily factual in nature. Most of the embedded reports studied—6 out of 10—were live and unedited accounts. Viewers were hearing mostly from reporters, not directly from soldiers or other sources. In eight out of 10 stories we heard from reporters only. This is battle coverage. Nearly half of the embedded reports—47%— described military action or the results. While dramatic, the coverage is not graphic. Not a single story examined showed pictures of people being hit by fired weapons. Over the course of reviewing the coverage, Project analysts also developed a series of more subjective impressions of embedding. Often the best reports were those that were carefully written and edited. Some were essentially radio reporting on TV. Technology made some reports stand out but got in the way when it was used for its own sake. Too often the rush to get information on air live created confusion, errors and even led journalists to play the game of “Telephone,” in which partial accounts become distorted and exaggerated in the retelling. On balance, however, Americans seem far better served by having the embedding system than they were from more limited press pools during the Gulf War of 1991 or only halting access to events in Afghanistan. Moreover, the first week of the war hints that fears that the embedding system would mostly just co-opt the press or would fatally risk military security in time may wane. 1 The study examined stories from embedded reporters in three of the first six days of the coverage (Friday March 21, Saturday March 22 and Monday March 24). These encompass days in which ground troops began their push into Iraq, when they first encountered serious resistance and the first day that some began to suggest that U.S. troop momentum had slowed. The study examined the traditional key viewing hours for news each day, from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., on the three major broadcast networks and two cable channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News) as well as the evening news programs for the broadcast networks and the analogous hour-long evening news programs on cable. This consisted of the following programs: ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Early Show, NBC’s Today Show, CNN’s American Morning, Fox & Friends, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports and Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume. In the 40.5 hours of programming examined over those three days, the five networks studied aired 108 embedded reports. Each story was coded for such items as topic, extent of editing, sourcing, and nature of the footage. In addition to this content analysis, Project analysts also recorded more subjective impressions about the risks and potentials of the embedded reporting based on the stories they saw. These impressions are based on the networks and cable channels listed above as well as two news outlets not included in the formal coding, PBS and MSNBC. Americans themselves seem to be conflicted about embedding. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that overall, 58% of Americans said embedded reporters “are a good thing.” Of the 34% who said it was “a bad thing,” most are worried that it is providing too much information that could help the enemy.1 But the tracking survey also found as time went on, people were more likely to say they felt depressed, frightened, tired out, and saddened by watching the coverage. LIVE AND UNEDITED VERSUS TAPED PACKAGES In general, the embedded reports tended toward immediacy over reflection, though this depended on the Embedded Reports: Live day, and it differed by medium. versus Taped Overall, 61% of embedded reports were live and 2 Live reports 49.1% unedited. Live audio only 12.1 Only roughly a quarter of the embedded reports Combination 11.1 studied (28%) were traditional “taped packages,” in All tape 27.8 which correspondents had written a script and video tape Total 100% had been reviewed and edited to tell that story visually. 1 See “TV Combat Fatigue on the Rise; But ‘Embeds’ Viewed Favorably,” Pew Research Center For the People and the Press, March 28, 2003. Available online at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=178. 2 Live and unedited is defined here as live reports, live audio with b-roll tape, live phone conversations without any video, or in three cases, live reports taped and played in their entirety later. 2 And one in ten embedded stories studied (11%) involved some combination of live and taped elements, such as a live account from a reporter, which then moves to a taped soundbite with a soldier, and then back to the reporter live. This reliance on live differed depending on the medium. Networks were more likely to air a fully taped package from the field, 35% versus 20% for cable. This bears out what some news executives have suggested is a conscious attempt to play to the natural strengths of the different programs and outlets. The Los Angeles Times paraphrased Bill Wheatley, the vice president of NBC News, as explaining that “the general rule has been to offer more tightly edited packages during the evening news and news magazines with extensive live reports on cable or within morning programs such as the Today Show.” Wheatley was quoted directly as saying, “I don’t want to get into the trap of just showing off the technology because the viewer will quickly tire of that. I do think we need to be careful of not over doing it if there is no point to it, but so far so good.”3 At least one prominent cable TV journalist is worried that her medium may be tilting too far in the direction of immediacy. “While the live [coverage] is exciting, it can’t give you everything in a concise and broader context,” Christiane Amanpour told the Los Angeles Times. “Our network has gotten away from taped packages. They think ‘live’ brings more spontaneity, ‘keep it moving’ is what they tell us.”4 In their evening newscasts, broadcast networks tended more than others to weave embedded material into other reportage, not unlike what newspapers might do. Take for example, ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings on Monday March 24. After Jennings went over the headlines, he turned to Pentagon correspondent John McWethy for a package on the war, which contained a number of video images from embedded camera people, and a pair of 10-second sound bites from embedded reporters Mike Cerre and John Berman. This was followed by a taped 25-second report from embedded reporter Bob Woodruff and a 55-second report from embedded reporter Ted Koppel. Contrast that to how CNN’s early evening newscast with Wolf Blitzer handled its embedded reports on that same night. The program used six reports from embeds that hour which averaged more than 100 seconds in length – and each report was separate and distinct, not part of a larger package. The reliance on live also changed as time went by. On the 21st and 22nd, 57% of the embedded reports studied were live and unedited. By Monday March 24, however, live reports had dropped to less than half of all the embedded reporting studied, 47%. Over time, the embedded reports also got shorter. More than a third of reports studied on the 21st and 22nd were 3 minutes or longer. But two days later, that had fallen to just 11% of stories. WHAT GOT COVERED Some observers wondered how much the embedded reporting would be about actual fighting, or whether the embedded reporters would be limited to “feel good” 3 See Brian Lowry and Elizabeth Jensen, “The ‘Gee Whiz’ War,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2003, page E1. 4 Lowry and Jensen 3 stories about troop morale, supply lines, maneuvers and preparations.
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